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Positively Negative: A New PLOS ONE Collection focusing on Negative, Null and Inconclusive Results

“I never quit until I get what I’m after. Negative results are just what I’m after. They are just as valuable to me as positive results.” – Thomas A. Edison

The publication of negative results is vitally important for many reasons, not least that it helps prevent duplication of research effort and potentially expedites the process of finding positive results. However, the struggle to find a home to publish the work, and the effort necessary to submit and publish what can feel like negligible scientific contributions, has led to concerns that negative findings are becoming the missing pieces in the scientific literature.

Today PLOS ONE launches a new collection to highlight studies that present inconclusive, null findings or demonstrate failed replications of other published work. The collection has been titled ‘Missing Pieces’ in reference to the many null results filed away indefinitely and ultimately excluded from the scientific record.

Selected examples focus on the lack of a significant effect of postpartum psychological distress on mothers in rural Bangladesh, despite differing positive findings in India.

Frequency discrimination training (FDT) using integrated training with computer-gameplay has previously been reported to show limited improvement in treating the symptoms of tinnitus, however, recent results from a randomised controlled trial did not translate to therapeutic benefit.

The failure to replicate previously published work is prominently highlighted in the popular PLOS ONE psychology paper, Failing the Future. Three attempted replications on the existence of precognition failed to support the previously significant results supporting retroactive facilitation of recall.

The publication of negative results, such as the works featured in the collection, is essential to research progress. Many journals, however, reject studies reporting negative or inconclusive results because the work is not considered impactful enough. In contrast, PLOS ONE does publish such studies; our publication criteria state that we will consider all work that makes a contribution to the field independent of impact.

Through this collection we hope to demonstrate that negative results are valuable to the community in cases where the result is illuminating in the context of previous work.

This collection serves to highlight negative result studies and to encourage the submission of negative results to PLOS ONE. If you would like your work to be considered for the Missing Pieces Collection, please contact collections@plos.org

This is the future of science. The younger generation of scientists are wanting to push beyond the grandiose manner of publishing science that extrapolates our experiments into the cure of disease and betterment for humanity. Whether the goal is to find a medical miracle or answer deep questions about the dynamics of life, the truth is what we are interested in. Why else would someone become a scientist? and anyone who has gone through graduate school to get a Ph.D in Science knows it is not for the lifestyle and pay. There is too much pressure to find a wanted answer, and not enough emphasis on just finding the truth. The minutia of scientific discovery is rarely the intended answer, but the process of deduction and what is not the answer to the scientific question being asked. We are causing an artificial strain on grant funding by only sharing what works and limiting the methods to our published research. We are suppose to depend on one another for information to advance science. How many scientists out there are troubleshooting the same problems? How much of our grant funding goes to troubleshooting and research that results in data supporting the null hypothesis? I don’t know the actual statistics but I am willing to bet that it is much more than what is actually shared and published. Until we start sharing the minutia of science that is carried out, we will never truly advance, not just as scientists, but as a species. It is great that PLOS ONE supports the idea of Open Sharing! What is the point of “Impact Points” when you don’t think about a global impact.